Ix: Stranger From the Sky
by RedWaxie-Zero
Summary: Long before Arthur, Pan Galactic GargleBlasters or even the Guide, Ford Prefect was a young alien named Ix who lived around the vicinity of Betelgeuse. In his own voice he reluctantly tells his story of growing up. Not like Zarquon gave him a choice.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: **This idea has been sitting in the back of my head since last year and it needs some air. So here it is standing very awkwardly out in the open. The intro is an explanation by Ford Prefect as to why he's writing this and a great excuse for me to use him as a narrator. This is largely based off random sentences and blips from the books. **

**Disclaimer: I do NOT own ANYTHING of the late Douglas Adams and if I knew the person who does now, or could tell Adams directly I'd say, I'm terribly sorry, please don't sue me. **

****

**Ix: Stranger From the Sky**

_ I never thought I'd ever be doing this but here I am. As I am writing this, I'm currently in Limbo._

_Why? Because I just happened to do temporal U-turn and found myself on Earth just as it exploded. In other words, I am dead. I'm not quite sure what happened to the Trillians, Arthur, or the totty who likes to throw rocks at my head, but at the moment I could care less. _

_In my personal opinion, death is over rated, and quite frankly, I find that hilarious. One minute, I'm splitting my sides thinking just how funny Life, the Universe and everything really is, and the next, I have no sides and Zarquon is standing beside me ready to pass my judgment. Of course, THAT did not help my current condition because I burst into an entirely new fit of laughter and probably would have sent my spleen flying across the room. That is, if I'd had one. Zarquon failed to find any humor in it, the big stiff. When I had finally managed to pull myself together, I asked how God was, if he was still sorry for the inconvenience, and if Zarquon knew just how late he was for his second coming because the whole Galaxy is going to pot. Just a few simple questions I've been meaning to get off my chest. Next thing, Zarquon says to me "That's not funny." And sets me to the task of writing the autobiography of my childhood and won't pass judgment until I finish. _

_Just so you know, life around my home star of Betelgeuse was very boring and I do my best to try to forget it for more reasons then that. I could very easily sum it all up into one sentence and be done, which I did. But Zarquon didn't find that very funny either and is making me do it all over again this time in excruciating detail. This guy's as bad as my old editor from the Guide. _

_Just remember, I'm not enjoying this. _

**Part 1.1**

The earliest memories I have are a jumble of sounds, lights and images that make no sense, so I'll skip those and jump ahead to one of any importance. I vaguely remember a room. The room was dark, as if in twilight. Slanting beams of light poked through the drawn blinds from outside. The décor of the room was an ecliptic assortment of sagging furniture, lamps, and old magazines. All compacted into a very tight space with a low ceiling, held up by walls peppered with post-its, and a dusty, scuffed wooden floor. I especially remember that wooden floor because of all the time I spent picking splinters out of my foot from walking on it. However I wasn't walking on it this time, I was sitting. I had managed to build a small fort in the middle of the room out of throw pillows and cushions from the couch. I'd been up for hours now, sitting alone inside the dimness of the fort, watching dust particles dancing in and out of the sunbeams through a small skylight where the cushions met.

I must have been at least four or five years of age and so far was certain about only one thing… A Hrung had collapsed on Betelgeuse Seven.

I didn't know who had told me, and of course, I didn't know what that meant, nor why or how it had done it. In fact I still don't really know what a Hrung is, but it sounded like something awfully good to know at the time. Something that if said with the right low and ominous voice would make other people raise their eyebrows and take notice of your uncommon brilliance. I'd already tried that several times on people I knew and for the most part they ignored me.

After all I only knew two… well actually one and quarter, and one of them I had noticed just now, was looking down at me disapprovingly.

This was Maej.

I was never quite sure what my family relationship to her was, aside that it was somehow immediate. She was still in her dressing gown, her arms indignantly crossed. I never thought of her as old, her face was not that of an old person, but the long, wispy white hair she kept in a disheveled bun might have told a different story.

"Some of us would prefer you keep the cushions _on_ the chairs, boy." She said quietly. That was how she normally addressed me as… boy, what do you think you're doing, and my personnel favorite, Oh for Zark's sake! I didn't have a name at the time… well I did, but I didn't know what it was, and neither did Maej. She said it had something to do with a high fatality rate of children younger than the age of nine because of over-stressed caregivers.

Anyways, I stuck my head through the opening between the cushions. Maybe she'd forget about the cushions if I focused her anger on something else.

"A Hrung collapsed on Betel-"

"I don't care what collapsed on what." She interjected "You've told me a hundred times and I'm sick of hearing it! From now on, I forbid you to say it." I opened my mouth again. " And don't change the words around, it still means the same thing." There was a pause between us. I began to wonder if she would leave if I sat there long enough in silence.

"Well?" Maej finally said, gesturing to the cushions. The answer was never. I withdrew my head back inside and crawled out through an opening on the side. Maej helped me pull the fort apart and put the cushions back in their proper places. She made one circle around the room to make sure everything was in the exact spot it had been before my ransacking. She also managed to stub her toe against one of the chairs and after snarling at it for a few minutes went into the kitchen. I followed her, collecting some of the post-its that fluttered off the wall as she went by. I sat down at a large round table adjacent to the refrigerator, which had also been covered in post-its.

The kitchen resembled all the other rooms: compact, low ceiling, and cluttered with stuff that had seen better days.

Sitting towards the wall on the table was a giant glass pickle jar full of thick yellow, filmy liquid, in which a head floated. It's skin had become sallow, and its auburn hair floated serenely about its ghostly face. This was the other person I knew, who was referred to simply as the Head.

"Hello Head." I said to it. The head on its own accord turned itself around to face me, and grinned. It babbled to me in a sort of frantic gibberish. I watched as the bubbles escaped from its mouth and floated to the top of the jar. The Head was always incredibly happy to see me.

"And there he goes again." Maej said as she put a kettle on the stove. The head spun around in its' jar to give an incoherent retaliation. "What's that? I'm sorry I can't understand a thing you're saying, and will continue not too until you start talking in Betol, alright." Maej said frankly, putting her hands on her hips. The two glared at each other for a few seconds, before the head mumbled something and rolled its eyes. "Glad we could come to an understanding." She said smiling and patting it affectionately on the lid.

The Head never said anything we could remotely understand, yet it seemed to understand us perfectly and often responded with great enthusiasm. Then Maej would interrupt with a comment about the fact that we couldn't decipher what it said. (For those of you lucky enough to have never been to Betelgeuse, and are at a loss of what Betol is, it's the dialect used around the Betelgeusian system.)

Thinking about this now, we could have just used a Babelfish and made it easier, but if Maej had ever owned one, it had obviously died years ago. Probably from the lack of talking that went about the place.

Maej plunked a large mug of coffee in front of me. Its rich aroma filled my nose. I looked at Maej, confused. She never let me touch the stuff. And I thought her coffee smelled better than it actually tasted. Maej, noticing my quizzical look, said. "That's not for you, that's for the head. You mind pouring it in his jar for me." She turned to rummage through the cupboard.

I think the head had the same opinion about Maej's coffee as I did. I apologetically lifted the lid and poured the steaming liquid in. The head was enveloped in a thick brown cloud. When the coffee had settled to the bottom, I could tell from the it's expression that it had forgiven me. It made a face, causing a smile to brake out on mine. We had a tacit relationship like that.

By now, Maej had found a plastic bag full of small white bottles. She pulled out each of them one by one and squinted at the labels, and the post-it each one of them had. "Boy, aren't you going to eat something?" she asked without looking up. I shrugged. She looked up. "Go look in the fridge." She said, nodding her head in its direction. I opened the fridge door with my foot because it was within close proximity, and because I could. There wasn't much in there. After peering around, I pulled out a jar of… of… I wasn't quite sure what it was. "What's this?" I asked.

"I don't know," Maej consulted the post-its on the fridge. "Does it have ice on it?" she finally asked.

"Yes,"

"Put it back, then." I put the jar back. After some more searching, I sat back munching what I think was supposed to be pizza. The head watched me with minor curiosity. Maej gulped down several pills from the bottles. Some she took for her headaches, others where so-called wonder drugs she'd bought off the sub-Ether that supposedly were meant to improve memory. The rest were to combat the side effects. She took a sip of coffee and gazed out the window over the sink. Her brow furrowed, a moment later, it was as if she had turned to stone.

The head and I glanced at each other. Both of us had witnessed this phenomenon before. She would become eerily silent, her eyes became listless, her shoulders would hunch slightly and her expression would become blank, as if she had suddenly forgot who she was.

I guess it's important that I explain the reason for this, even if I wasn't aware of it at the time. Some time shortly after I was born, an acidic chemical solution was injected into her brain. I don't want to go into the why just yet, except that there was something in her memory that needed to be eradicated, and as the years went by, the solution slowly ate at her cerebrum, causing her to forget, and sometimes causing brief instances of amnesia such as this. Maej knew this, and maybe the Head did too, but of course they never said a word about it to me. Instead, Maej did her best to keep everything unchanged. She would never throw things away unless it was absolutely necessary, she took the pills even if it was more out of addiction because they obviously never worked, and for everything else, she wrote the post-its to herself until it was safe for one to say we used them as wallpaper. She would become furious if she caught me rearranging the furniture or removing the post-its. However, no matter what she did, she still couldn't remember anything past a month. The solution continued to cause her to forget small things, to become absent-minded, to slowly go mad.

The stillness shattered when Maej slammed her mug on the counter. The Head and I jumped at the suddenness of it.

"Zarquon!" she shouted. I ran up to the window and stood on my toes to peer out. There was smoke rising over the horizon.

"When ever I order stuff over the Sub-ether, I wish they wouldn't send it in a great ball of fire hurtling to the ground!" she grumbled. Her fingers drummed an angry rhythm on the counter top.

This was how we got our supplies. Since we lived far from any civilization. Maej ordered things in bulk over the Sub-ether, which back then was still a fairly new and exciting thing. Whoever she ordered it from would send it crashing down in a piece of a cargo ship. Maej wasn't very pleasant with strangers, even in delivery service uniforms.

I was struck by a sudden urge to go out and see the crash for myself. It wasn't often things crashed near our home and anything was better than staying here. "Can I go?" I begged.

"Go?" Maej repeated.

"To see the crash." I said.

"Boy, its just cargo, besides its still on fire. You wouldn't be able to salvage anything from it yet." She said.

"I want to go anyways." I said adamantly. Maej looked at the pillar of smoke, then at me, then at the smoke again. She glanced at the post-its on the cupboard as if they would have an answer.

"Have any chores that still need to get done?" She asked. I shook my head vigorously, which was a lie. There was always something I hadn't done.

"Okay," she said. "But don't forget to feed the head before you go." Before she could change her mind, I had tossed the rest of my pizza into the Head's jar and was running out the door. "Just remember how to get back home this time, because I'm not going out there to search for you again." I heard her call after me right before I slammed the door with a very satisfying bang.

A/N: **Hey, I published this on April 2****nd****. That's 4/2/07. Get it? 4/2, 42 and 7 is a multiple of 42. Ha ha…ha… heh… ignore that. Be honest with the reviews. **


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: **Continuing on…. **

**Part 1.2 **

Ordinarily, most moons have some economical benefits for the planets they orbit. If they orbit planets with severe over population such as the ones in the Cancri system, pleasant suburbs and condominiums with neatly trimmed lawns will often dotting their surfaces. All in the hopes that people will buy them and move off the planet. Usually that doesn't work, so hotel resorts are put up instead to ensure that a minor percentage will always at the least, be on vacation. I say this because the moon I lived on, is the exact opposite of all that. it's a dry, flat, barren, desert of a wasteland and had always_ been_ a dry, flat, barren desert of a wasteland, really, the worst excuse imaginable for a moon.

It's called Ypres and it's the smallest and farthest out of all the moons that orbit Betelgeuse Five. Which can always be seen looming large and ominous on the horizon, silhouetted by the bright glare of Betelgeuse and

The first thing that becomes apparent upon stepping out onto the surface of Ypres is the stifling heat. From just coming out of a cool interior of the house, which resembled a pile of rubble from the outside, the heat welcomed you like a pillow being stuffed in the face.

The surface as I've said is flat and insipid, with an occasional rock formation jutting up into the sky like a sore thumb. The gravel beneath my feet was red as well as uninteresting, baked dry by the blazing sun. I scuffed my feet in it, until they were the same color as the ground, and started to make my way in the direction of the smoke rising into the sky.

I had ventured out here many times before, both alone and with Maej. I was very much acquainted with the area, so getting lost wasn't a problem. But in the particular direction I was heading, there was a rare spot of fascination. A Grabbite hole.

Yes, there was life unfortunate enough to live here, excluding Maej, the Head, and I, of course. After all, we all know that life has managed to find a way to live in all kinds of nooks and crannies, some quite remarkable, others unimaginable, and a few I'd rather not mention.

A Grabbite, by the way, is a small furry animal, about the size of a shoebox with long ears and a bushy tale. They live off the lichens clinging to rocks underground and hop around on the surface from hole to hole. They're very shy creatures and are extremely wary of anything that does not resemble another Grabbite. Why they're called Grabbites, is because the first person to actually see one tried to turn it into a handbag and died of rabies shortly after. That this Grabbite hole just so happened to be in the same direction as the smoke, and as I stared down at the deep depths of its underground system of tunnels in hopes of spotting one, doing whatever it is they do underground, I noticed the Dengos watching me.

The Dengos were the other unfortunates living here. Normally they would come out at dusk or right before sunrise, being out here like this was unusual. They were often the subjects my nightmares when I was little. If Maej became extremely frustrated with me, she'd threaten to leave me outside and let the Dengos have me. It was an empty threat but I always went quiet afterwards.

These Dengos were waiting for a Grabbite to come out of the hole obviously. But seeing them standing there, their sandy, lithe forms rippling in the rising heat, made one think maybe that's _not_ what they were here for.

I froze, than started to back away from them, slowly, never looking away, feeling unusually cold. They continued to watch me with interest, cocking their heads, ears swiveling in my direction, one of their tales twitched, another raised its nose to sniff the air.

One thing to know about Ypresian Dengos is that you're safe as long as you don't do anything incompetent. But it's hard not to be incompetent, when you're five. I tripped over my own feet and fell heavily to the ground.

Upon that, the Dengos deciding I was far more interesting than a Grabbite, and began their pursuit. I bolted, terrified. The Dengos fell in step behind me, never running ahead of me, barking to each other and panting in time with their strides. As if they were toying with me. One of them gave a howl, long, and eerie. The others replied. To them, this was fun. This was what they were good at.

Involuntarily I ran in the direction of the smoke seeing it more and more as a haven. Thoughts raced through me alongside vivid reenactments of past nightmares. Would Maej and the Head know what had happened to me if I didn't come home? Would I become another post-it Maej would forget about next month?

Suddenly the ground beneath me disappeared, I saw the sky, then ground, sky, ground, sky, ground. I landed at the bottom of a crater staring up at a spinning sky. Brushing off pebbles I had dislodged on my way down, I sat up and looked around. There was a piece from the hull of a cargo ship, charred and smoldering. The source of the smoke.

The Dengos stood along the rim of the crater, their tails waving like victory banners. Tongues hanging out the sides of their mouths in sardonic smiles. However, the smiles vanished when a loud "DAMN IT!!!" rang out over the landscape. Striking all of us hard with its foreign, and odd familiarity.

There was a crashing sound and humanoid figure appear around the corner, lugging a fire extinguisher behind him. "It's a matter of consideration, not dumping your junk on poor unsuspecting planets. Especially if I'm _IN IT_!!!" He growled. The Dengos, tails between their legs, took this as their cue to leave. I dashed behind a rock to hide. "Just because I may be living with the cargo doesn't make me apart of it." The man continued. A cloud of carbon dioxide gushed from the fire extinguisher with a whoosh, "Honestly, I don't care," He kicked the hull just for spite. "Really I don't, and if that bothers you than fine! But that doesn't give you the right to trap me inside a giant fireball of death, Zar-qu-on!" He gave the wreckage a few more blasts, quenching whatever was left of the fire. "Oh, and by the way," He turned to address the wreckage like it was a person. "_THAT WAS THE WORST SONNET I EVER HEARD_!!" Cautiously, I perched myself on top of the rock I was hiding behind, fascinated by this stranger from the sky, berating the ship with what seemed to be all the derogatory terms known to the Milky Way, all in their original languages.

"What's a sonnet?" I asked innocently. He whirled around, stared at me, shocked that there was life here at all, especially in the form of a small boy sitting cross-legged on a rock.

The next second, quicker than I thought it possible for him, he lunged at me, one hand was holding my mouth shut so I wouldn't scream, his wild eyes boring into me.

"How long have you been sitting here? Where did you come from? How many of you are there? They're not invisible are they?" He shook me vigorously when I gave no response, I was too terrified too. "Come on, answer me!" He shouted, shaking me harder. I did, but not in the way he expected.

He gave a tremendous howl! Immediately letting go of me, he jumped backwards, hopped around in a circle, shook his hand as if trying to shake off the throbbing pain, and finally resorted to sucking on his finger. I wiped my mouth on my sleeve and glared at him. He moved a couple steps away from me, watching warily.

"You bit me!" He paused, then with a gasp said, "I knew it!" He moved further away and crouched as if I was going to attack. "You're carnivorous aren't you?"

"No," I didn't even know what that meant. "You were hurting me." I replied simply.

"Oh… sorry." was all he said, he sat down and continued to nurse his finger. We both watched each other for a few minutes. "You're not telepathic are you?" he asked hesitantly. I didn't know what that meant either and he must've sensed it because after a pause he said, "Didn't think so, you don't talk enough. D'you know anyone else who is?" I shook my head. "Good," he said. "They always assume you can read their mind, so they do thier best not to think by not shutting up." We sat in more silence. "No strange religions?"

"What?"

"No strange rituals involving sacrificing travelers?"

"No, why?"

"Cause once I went to this planet where the inhabitants were so xenophobic, they'd toss newcomers out of their tree houses. They weren't a very pleasant lot." Silence resumed. I took the time to study him.

He was unlike anybody I'd ever seen in my short life. He wore a battered, torn trench coat that had been repatched several times and a faded tie-die tee shirt underneath. His skin, burned by countless suns, was a dull orange. Discolored shreds were fastened around his neck like a scarf and stiff black hair poked out from beneath a bandana wrapped around his head. But what was even stranger, were the pair of scratched ski goggles resting on his forehead, a large bulge on his back that was conspicuously covered up by the patched trench coat, and straps around his torso, almost as if whatever was being hidden in the bulge behind him needed to be kept close to him or would otherwise escape. And lastly, he was wearing what looked like a pair of very comfortable shoes.

His facial features were bold, rash, almost dangerous. But sitting on the ground, finger in his mouth, and watching me like I was going to pounce, revealed him as merely an outlier, the kind who gets dragged, chewed and spat out with indifference by normal society.

"What planet is this?" he asked, getting to his feet.

"It's not a planet, it's a moon." I replied.

"That would explain the gravity difference." He began to climb up the crater wall. Not wanting him to go away just yet, I hopped off my rock and climbed up after him. When he got to top, he peered around, but when I finally caught up to him, he suddenly ducked his head and yanked mine down with him, as if he didn't want us to be seen.

"How many of you are there?" He whispered,

"Who?" I said,

"Shhhht, don't talk so loud." He hissed franticly. "How many of you live here? Do all you little people live in a village of some kind near by?" he asked. I stared at him, utterly confused. "Okay… maybe I haven't explained it properly," He sighed and tried again. "Are there any other beings, _such as yourself_, who live here?"

"Yes,"

"Who?"

"There's Grabbites, Maej, Dengos, lichens-"

"I meant _intelligent _beings." He said, getting irritated by my indolence.

"Just Maej and the Head." I said quickly. He looked a little taken aback.

"Is that it?"

"Pretty much." He peered over the edge of the crater again. I poked my head up to, trying to figure out who he was so afraid would see us. He ducked both our heads down again.

"They're not hostile are they?" he asked, still whispering. I thought for a moment.

"Maej might be if she's having a bad day." I said, remembering why delivery services preferred to throw packages out for us to catch rather than deliver them directly. "But the Heads' not."

"The… Head?" he asked nervously.

"Yes, we keep it in a pickle jar. I feed it every day, and it talks complete nonsense. But it's very friendly." He gave me an odd look before sliding back down to the bottom, mumbling something like,

"And I dared to ask." I slid down after him, curious to see what he would do next. However, what he did next wasn't very interesting. He sat there, gave a deep sigh as if trying to collect his thoughts, and chewed on his bottom lip a little. It took awhile before he noticed that I was still their looking at him expectantly. His brow furrowing slightly he asked, "What's your name?" unable to answer that I shrugged. "You don't have a name?" He continued.

"No, I have one." I said.

"But, you don't know it, do you?" For the first time in my life, I began to feel uncomfortable about the fact that I didn't know my own name. It was a very similar feeling to the one you get when everyone around you is laughing at a joke you don't get, and then you realize you're the butt of it. He must have sensed this because he immediately said, "Well, okay, there's nothing wrong with that." He grinned. "You'd be shocked to know how many strags in this Galaxy walk around not knowing their own names. It gets a little disturbing when you think about it. You can call me Hox by the way." He said thrusting his hand out with such force it made me jump. When I continued to stare at it blankly, he picked up my hand, put into his and shook it vigorously.

And, that's how I met Hox. After introductions, he got up and asked me to help him look for something. We spent a large part of the afternoon rummaging through the charred pieces of the wreckage until Hox found a rucksack, apparently his, still intact and mostly untouched except for a burnt hole on the bottom. Hox immediately over turned it, dumping out what few contents it had. He sifted through the items, checking to see if everything was there. He sat back on his heels. His lip curled slightly as his black murky eyes fixed upon me. I could almost hear an idea click in his head.

"There's a small favor I need to ask of you and that means you have to do everything I say. You think you can do that?" he asked slowly. I nodded. He leaned in. as if he was going to tell me a secret. "What I need you to do, is go back to where ever it is you live, and bring me back a toothbrush, and some tooth paste. With me so far?"

"But," I began, "Why do you need a toothbrush?"

"Because…" Hox paused, "My halitosis is so bad, I could knock a Bugblatter Beast unconscious, want me to demonstrate?"

"No,"

"Exactly," He said. Hox looked up at the sky for a moment. "Er, how long are the days here?" He asked. I looked at the horizon, to see Betelguese slowly making its way down below the rocks.

"Not long, today's almost over." I said. "I should be getting back soon."

"Okay, come back tomorrow then. But don't forget what I said. Now off with you." He gave me a slight push in the back. I took a few steps forward before suddenly feeling a pang of fear in the pit of my stomach as the earlier events of the day flooded back into my memory.

"What?" Hox asked impatiently upon seeing my horrified expression.

"Dengos," was all I said.

"What about Dengos?" As if on cue, a Dengo howled in the distance. Hoxs' eyes flick up to the crater wall then back down to me. He unraveled his scarf from around his neck and plopped it on my head.

"There," He said "Happy now?" Surprisingly, what he had given me was in fact a worn out towel with a pungent, unpleasant odor.

"What's this supposed to do?" I asked.

"Nothing," said Hox, "Just keep it on your head like that while you walk home, now off!" he gave me another push, and sent me on my way.

At such a young age, I was baffled as to how a towel could keep Dengos away. But thinking about it now, it makes perfect sense. Not only would a Dengo never get close to something so rancid, but as I walked back home I admit I felt a certain sense of security with it wrapped about me.

I never saw any Dengos along the way.

A/N:** There's a specific reason I decided to call the moon Ypres. It's the same name as a town in a very special country. Guess which one. **


End file.
